


Indiana Rogers and the Stony Temple

by AnonEhouse



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Cap-IronMan Tiny Reverse Bang, Cap-IronMan Tiny Reverse Bang 2015, First Meetings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4258950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/pseuds/AnonEhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard Stark gives Steve an assignment in South America, rather than have him promote war bonds. When Steve finds himself in a death-trap underground temple, he really hopes the treasure is worth it. Really, a gold alloy stronger than steel, what are the odds? Well, fantasy or not, it's better than being a dancing monkey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indiana Rogers and the Stony Temple

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the art prompt CODE NAME: ASSEMBLE [Like Nothing You’ve Ever Gone After Before](http://capim-tinybang.tumblr.com/post/122629974013/title-like-nothing-youve-ever-gone-after-before) for the Cap-IronMan Tiny Reverse Bang Artist: Woad  Link to Tumblr: tinctoriawoad.tumblr.com

(If you are reading this on any PAY site this is a STOLEN WORK, the author has NOT Given Permission for it to be here. If you're paying to read it, you're being cheated too because you can read it on Archiveofourown for FREE.)

This wasn't so bad, Steve told himself. Sure, he was climbing down rotting ropes into the depths of a monolithic structure in search of a legend that was probably the product of a bored and gullible scribe, who probably misunderstood what the last survivor of an ancient Aztec cult had said in his dying delirium.

On the bright side, he wasn't dressed up like a dancing monkey while his friends went off to war and if even a little of the legend was true, he'd be bringing back a near-indestructible gold alloy that could be vital in many essential industries. Pre-Columbian smiths might have stumbled across a secret lost in time. If he could find a sample, it could be analyzed. Howard Stark had pulled a lot of strings to get Steve assigned to this mission and Steve wasn't going to give up just because his guides and bearers had deserted him when they saw the nest of cobras.

They weren't true cobras, of course, just a mildly venomous water snake that could raise a hood. Steve had worked as a political cartoonist for years, studying a lot of animals for their symbolic meaning so he'd recognized them. Hercules fighting the Hydra, a many-headed water snake, was a popular theme, with politicians' faces on the snakes. He'd been bitten once while clearing out the nest, and while his hand was a little swollen and painful, he was still breathing fine half an hour later, instead of being, you know, dead. He really hoped he wasn't heading for a Snake Cult hq. if there was such a thing.

After the cobras, there were walls that tried to crush him, a corridor that shot spears, and finally a room that flooded, putting out his torch, but not before he'd noticed one of the stone blocks way up high was a slightly different color, meaning that it had been quarried later at a different point in the strata. When the water rose enough for him to reach it, he pushed hard and it shifted, revealing the floor of another chamber. Dripping, Steve crawled through the opening. It wasn't as dark as it should have been. There was a diffuse light flickering around the edges of the stone blocks of the far wall.

He examined the wall, poking and prodding until he felt a stone shift. He looked around warily, expecting that he'd triggered another trap. There was a grinding noise behind him which turned out to be part of the floor lowering to become the first step in a stone staircase leading down. "Yeah. Said the spider to the fly." Steve checked his holster and discovered he'd lost his gun when the room flooded. He'd have to make do with his knife and the shield Howard had given him. It was an awkward thing to carry, but it had come in handy to deflect spears and scoop snakes out of the way. He went down the steps, holding the shield in front of him. The further down he went, the brighter it got. Not really bright, but enough to see the steps and a few feet beyond. There were carvings on the wall, but he couldn't see enough to make them out.

When he reached the final step he turned around and saw a small golden statuette standing on a chest high pedestal set in a green stone. Gold. This must be it. Steve took a step, and then stopped. Trap, right? The one thing he knew was that someone had to come in here to put the statue there, and they sure hadn't come in the way he did, through the flooded room. So there had to be a safe exit, and a safe path to the statue. Of course, it didn't have to be on _his_ side of the room.

Steve just stood perfectly still, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. He didn't see any spear-holes in the walls, or scrape marks from a movable ceiling. The floor, then. There wasn't enough light to make out details. He tossed his knife onto the stone flag a few feet in front of the stair. Nothing happened. He waited a second, then made a long stride to stand on the stone with the knife, and retrieve it. He was committed now, and in case he'd set off a delayed reaction he couldn't futz around. He tossed the knife a little further. Nothing happened. He stretched his stride to reach the knife without touching any other stone flags and then tossed it again.

The stone broke up under the knife, falling into a hole so black he couldn't tell how deep it was. Not that he had a chance to figure it out, because the stones touching it on three sides broke an instant later, and then more stones fell. Steve heard a grinding noise behind him. The stair was collapsing, blocking off his retreat. It wasn't a very good retreat, anyway, but it was annoying.

He turned back to face the statuette. The floor had stopped collapsing, but there was a gap stretching from wall to wall of at least twelve feet. He didn't have room to get a running start, and the stones of the wall were fitted too closely together for him to climb. "Yeah. Ok. Ok, I can do this. I can. Sure. I got this." 

He took a deep breath, and then another. Then before he could stiffen up by thinking about it, he swung his arms back, bent his knees, flexed, and leaped. He landed on the other side, leaning up against the pedestal with the statuette. From this close he could see a white light in its chest. He grinned and reached for it.

And then the statuette turned towards him. And spoke. "Don't touch me!"

Steve's hands dropped to his sides. "You're alive?"

"Look," the statuette said, "there's an energy field around me. Touch it and you die."

"I don't see anything," Steve said. "Is it electric?" He looked around for a plug or a wire. 

The statuette pointed up, drawing Steve's attention to a piece of blue glass, glowing in the ceiling high overhead. "I don't know what it is, just that it's powerful. It's keeping me alive in here, but I can't get out, and nothing can get in." It touched the air in front of it, where the pedestal ended, and flare of blue-white light sparked.

"Huh." Steve looked at the glass. It looked like it was mortared into a hole cut in the stone. "Ok." He slipped his arms out of the shield straps. "I've got an idea." He held the shield by the edge and looked at the blue glass. "Here goes nothin'."

"What? Hey, no, don't!"

Steve threw the shield and caught it when it bounced back after hitting the ceiling next to the blue glass.

"You missed," the statue said.

"No, I didn't," Steve told it just as a crack spread across the mortar and the blue glass fell at a angle, hitting the edge of the green stone, skipping and bouncing down into the crevasse of the floor collapse. "Got it," he said with satisfaction.

"AAAH, no, why did you do that? I wanted to study it! I ought to make you climb down and get it." 

Steve turned and took a step back. The statuette was now taller than him and the tiny white light was now large enough to provide decent illumination. So maybe it was a robot? It jumped down from the pedestal. There was a rumble and blue flames shot up from the crevasse. "On second thought... RUN!" 

There was only one open passageway, and it was narrowing as the tremors continued, knocking loose stones free, so Steve didn't really need to be told. He put his head down and hot-footed it.The robot was fairly nimble. It wasn't far behind Steve, and it caught up whenever Steve had to scramble over a fallen slab of stone. 

Steve could see daylight ahead, filtering through a screen of vines. He ran harder and got out just before the entrance sealed. "No!" The robot was still inside and strong as Steve was, he couldn't lift huge slabs of stone. He'd have to get help, get equipment, levers at least, and hope that even if the robot was crushed, he'd be able to salvage the metal. He put his hand to the rock. It trembled. He backed up. The rock visibly shook. He dove to one side and covered his head just before the rock shattered and tumbled down the mountainside. The robot strode out and stood with legs braced. It turned its head from side to side, before locating Steve.

"Well. That was fun," it said. Then it reached up and took off its head. No. It was a helmet, and under it was the sweaty face of a young man, couldn't be more than seventeen, with black hair, brown eyes and a wicked smirk.

"So, not a robot," Steve said. He fastened his shield onto his backpack again. "How did you wind up in there?"

"Long story, and I don't think we should hang around. Hydra's bound to have someone watching." The man in the robot suit started walking down the mountain, holding the helmet under one arm.

Steve was annoyed. He wasn't going to follow without some explanation. "Who ARE you?"

The young man stopped and looked back at him. "Tony Stark. Didn't my father send you?"

"Your father? Howard isn't old enough..."

Tony scowled at him. "He was a precocious bastard. Look, I'll tell you everything once we're not sitting targets, all right?"

"Yeah, ok." Steve might not have made it into the army, but he knew that made sense. He started walking until he was at Tony's side and then they went on together. "If my guides haven't run off with it, I've got a stash of supplies about five miles north of here."

"Any coffee?"

"Yeah."

"Bless you, handsome stranger." Tony pushed a boulder out of the way.

Steve felt his cheeks heat at the teasing. "You're just like your father."

"Am I?" Tony kicked a rock that really didn't need to be kicked. "I wouldn't know." And then he went sulky silent.

There didn't seem any point in pressing the matter. Steve led the way to his supplies and was relieved to find them intact. He set a small smokeless fire to boil a pot of coffee. Tony watched the water boiling, while Steve poked sticks into the fire. Abruptly Tony said, "Howard had a fling with one of the maids when he was young, and they got lucky with the fertility lottery. Rich family, scandal, yadda yadda. They threw money at mom, so she went away and didn't make a fuss. They threw a LOT of money at mom. She used it to get me a first class education and guess what? I guess I am like my old man. Precocious bastard. I made this suit, and I wanted to show it to him. Shove it up his nose that the kid he threw away like garbage was... you know."

"You wanted to impress him."

"Yeah, well. It was stupid." Tony pushed a stick into the fire. "I sent him enough of the specs to get him interested, and we met at his out of the way retreat where he did experiments they wouldn't allow in the city. I guess... I look like mom. He knew who I was and he told me to get the hell away from him. I... didn't like that."

"Um." Steve got out a tin mug, and poured coffee into it. "Here."

Tony took the coffee and gulped some down. "It was stupid. I was stupid. I put on the armor, and I got drunk, or I got drunk and put on the armor. I don't remember the sequence of events clearly. I made a scene in front of his guests." Tony drank some more coffee. "Falling down drunk in a powerful suit of armor. I shot out windows, and I shot off my mouth. Dear old Dad tried to shut me up, but eh, I'd had years of being a quiet little secret." Tony finished the coffee and held out the mug for more. "His guests could see I was telling the truth. One of them had a... I don't know. It was like that chip of blue, but it was a cube, a perfect cube, and it was... it hurt to look at it, it was so bright. And he did something."

Tony took the refilled mug from Steve and just held it. "I woke up where you found me, shrunk and stuck on that rock with this really, really ugly Nazi, I mean, he had a head like a boiled beet, ugly, gloating over being able to use me to force Howard to work for Hydra." Tony pouted. "He didn't give a damn about my suit. He wanted notes on something else. He said he'd promised Howard they'd let me go once they got them. I hope to God he didn't give in."

"No, he didn't. Howard sent me, but he didn't tell me about you," Steve said. "He gave me a story about ancient Aztec gold that was harder than steel. I guess he didn't know who was Hydra, who he could trust. That's why he asked me to do it, not anyone in the services."

"You're not in the army? I'm surprised." Tony drank some coffee, while looking over the rim of the cup at Steve. "Hell, I was gonna sign up when I hit eighteen, and I'm nothing compared to you. You're a recruiter's..." Steve could almost see Tony censoring himself. "favorite fantasy. You look like you could bench-press a tank."

Steve felt his cheeks heat again. "What made me this way is the secret they want from Howard. I was an experiment and they wanted to use me for publicity rather than let me join the army. They can't repeat it, the man who worked with Howard died, and had kept most of the secret in his head. So there's only me."

"What a shame," Tony said, licking a drop of coffee from his lips. "I mean, what a shame for the war effort." Tony smiled. "But I'm glad it worked for you. Hey, you never did tell me your name."

"Steve. Steve Rogers." 

Tony took off the armored gauntlet on his right hand and held out his hand. "Pleased to meet you. Maybe we can work together? I think we'd be very good together."

Steve took Tony's hand. It was warm, and strong. "Yeah. Maybe." He smiled. "Partners?"

"Partners."

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Hydra means 'water snake'.
> 
> Captain America: The First Avenger opened in 2011. The actor who played Howard was born in 1978 so he was around 33 in the movie, SO if he was 17 when he fathered Tony, Tony would be16?


End file.
